Historically, the spoken word has been the preferred and, prior to the advent of writing, principal medium for communication in human society, particularly for social networking. Writing evolved as an alternate medium for communication, beginning with ancient civilizations that needed to track food and livestock inventories. Unlike the spoken word, writing offered a more precise and persistent medium that functioned independently from the time and place of expression. Thus, even the earliest forms of writing allowed for so-called “time-shifting,” which enables a message composed by a sender to be read at a later time by a recipient.
The advent of the electronic age greatly increased the evolution of enhanced forms of spoken and written communication. Currently, the telephone offers the mainstream technology for transacting voice communications with over 90% of the households in the United States having telephone service. In addition, wireless telephone usage has grown dramatically in the last decade with an estimated one billion wireless telephone users worldwide. Electronic mail (email) and text messaging offer the closest equivalent technology for written communication, spurred by the rapid growth and development of the Internet and the proliferation of personal computer usage. In 1999, an estimated 130 million people used email in the United State alone, with at least 600 million email users worldwide.
Traditionally, voice and text communications have followed different usage paradigms. Voice communications, via a telephone, are instantaneous, real-time, and primarily one-to-one communications methods. Written communications, via email, are time-shifted and offer one-to-many or many-to-many communication methods with an implied means for persistently chronicling communications through email storage.
Over time, both forms of communication have accumulated features reminiscent of the other. For instance, voicemail and conference calling respectively allow time-shifted and one-to-many or many-to-many voice communications. Analogously, voice mail attachments to conventional email messages allow instantaneous receipt of verbal communications contemporaneous to email message receipt.
Recently, text messaging, popularly referred to as Instant Messaging, introduced a new category of electronic written communications. Text messaging combines the immediacy of telephone voice communication with the textual format of email communications. Text messaging moves the email paradigm into near real-time by enabling users to compose and exchange messages during an interactive session. Text messaging provides a rapid form of two-way written communication that still allows a sender to review a message prior to dispatch. Additionally, the use of sessions enables group communication through chat forums and can be used to unilaterally inform users about the availability of other group members. This past year, there were over 220 million text messaging users worldwide.
Operationally, text messaging begins with a signed-on user composing a text message and dispatching the text message to another signed-on user. Upon receipt, the message is displayed on the screen of the recipient in a near-instantaneous fashion and the other user can compose a reply for dispatch back to the first user.
Text messaging has been implemented in several formats. Instant Messaging operates as an adjunct to traditional email clients as an add-on Internet-based application. The Short Messaging Service (SMS) is a wireless telephone variant of Instant Messaging, which has grown rapidly in popularity, especially in Europe. Independent of the type of text messaging employed, users are able to keep a log of transmitted and received messages.
Both telephonic and electronic written communications have helped society keep up with the accelerating pace of modern living and, at the same time, have contributed to this acceleration. For instance, wireless telephone and messaging communications now enable people to perform multiple tasks almost anywhere. However, both forms of communication have limitations. Telephone communication, for example, requires the full attention of the user and the ability to respond in real-time to the other party. Conversely, text messaging enables a user to defer sending a response until convenient, but requires the user to read each message on a display and to manually compose a response through typing, both difficult activities to perform while mobile.
Wireless push-to-talk voice communication is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,917,799, issued Jul. 12, 2005, to Ross et al., the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference. A wireless telephone digitizes the voice of a user in response to the depression of a push-to-talk button, either physical or virtual. The digitized voice is sent to a base station, which places the data on a server. Other wireless telephones can recover the data for conversion back to digitized voice.
However, users must activate the push-to-talk button to transact a voice communication and session-based voice communications between individual and ad hoc moderatable discussion groups are not contemplated.
A position-linked chat system, method and computer product, is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,981,021, issued Dec. 27, 2005, to Takakura et al., the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference. A server device includes a chat room controller, which generates a plurality of chat rooms based on a geographical standard; a chat room selector, which selects a chat room in which a user on a specific terminal can participate based on information relating to the current position of that terminal, and a voice controller, which mixes voices of users transmitted from the terminals of respective users participating in the same chat room. However, session-based forms of voice messaging communication that flexibly allow participation in multiple, simultaneous and moderatable discussion groups are not contemplated.
Wireless chat automatic status tracking is described in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2001/0031641 to Ung et al., published Oct. 18, 2001, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference. A technique and apparatus provide status tracking of a presence or location of a mobile wireless device, even outside of a particular wireless system. In one disclosed embodiment, a wireless chat tracking system utilizes a change in mobile registration status to automatically notify a chat group system outside the wireless network of current status information activity. However, session-based forms of voice messaging communication that flexibly allow participation in multiple, simultaneous and moderatable discussion groups are not contemplated.
Chat server and wireless chat devices are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,459,892 and 6,668,169, both to Burgan et al., respectively issued on Jan. 1, 2002, and Dec. 23, 2003, the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference. A wireless communication system includes a system controller, radio frequency (RF) transmitter, RF receiver, transmit antenna, receive antenna, chat server, and a plurality of wireless communication devices. The chat server manages the communication of a plurality of chat discussions, facilitating substantially real-time communication among the wireless communication devices within the wireless communication system. However, users must activate the push-to-talk button to transact a voice communication and session-based voice communications between individual and ad hoc moderatable discussion groups are not contemplated.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method that provides flexible voice communications between a plurality of individuals and discussion groups, preferably through a centralized voice message server and personal communication device clients, which automatically detect voice communications responsive to a user activated “attention.”